I enjoyed it, but if Jesse were here he would point out the tree issues are 100% attributed to the 4 months of heat.

I am 1000% sure that year was way too extreme all around.

Not sure I buy that. It's not just a little colder, it's way colder than anything surrounding it. While the lake effect is occurring, it would be likely to keep the temps elevated downwind of Lake Michigan with the flow off of the relatively warmer water. It could be colder at other times when the lake isn't in play and there's extra fresh snowcover, but those 2 things would probably tend to cancel out. Also, I would bet there are very few seasons, if any, where the northwest Indiana "belt" outsnows the western Michigan belt over an entire season. Individual events, sure, because the lake can absolutely dump when the flow is more northerly, but the quantity of those events is less than it is farther up the shore.

I'm 1000% sure the wet spring had nothing to do with the tree die off.

This makes me sad... snow in April is pretty common but that particular event kicked off six weeks of pure spring misery. Trees never fully leafed out here. Then 4+ months of heat and zero rain. Then summer into winter with snow on the ground and leaves still hanging on in early December. After that year we started having a major die off of trees around here. Too extreme.